After the Darkness
by sarramaks
Summary: Oneshot following on from 5:11 Retribution, but no real spoilers. Hotch visits Emily that night. Suggestions as to what will happen in the sequel to Calverville Point, South Dakota. Rated T but adult references.


_A/N: This is a short oneshot, that was inspired by episode 5:11. It follows on from the story that I will be posting in a few days called 'Humanity', and contains spoilers for that story even though it's not yet written! I'm clearly doing things backwards._

_I don't own Criminal Minds in any way._

_This is for everyone who reviewed __**Calverville Point, South Dakota**__._

_Enjoy – hopefully – and review! I need encouragement to begin the new one now it's kind of planned..._

After the Darkness

'_Night is the blotting paper for many sorrows.' - Author Unknown_

Fingertips trail across skin, making music as if stroking the keys of a piano. A clock ticks; its rhythmic beat softly keeping the time, a gentle reminder to the fact that the night is not immortal, and tender fingers feel a pulse echoing the life inside. Dark eyelashes sit on pale cheeks, a slight movement behind the lids hinting at the dreams of the sleeper and he watches her with a look of gentle awe as his fingers trace the curve of her hip, the heat of her body pass into his through nerves, veins, sinews.

A clock ticks; minutes fall away into an abyss of hidden memories as they move closer to dawn. Is she his guilty pleasure? His night-time temptress? His hand journeys across her stomach, feeling toned muscle and the slight resonance of an old scar. His fingers play its tune, a melody bittersweet and full of memories he'll never know, because she'll never tell him and he'll never ask. But still, he reads her skin, time slowing as he wills it, stealing those extra seconds. She murmurs and moves into him, then falling onto her back, unaware of him and his wakefulness.

The moon has been his friend often over recent months, guiding him through nightfulls of waking dreams where the bad men hunt and kill and maim and take. The moon has handed him each morning into the arms of the pale sun. For the sun could never be bright again. He shifts his fingers to her hair, almost black, ebony against her white sheets. He buries his senses in it, the scent of the days, of her brush with death, still fresh.

She was too tired to shower when she got home, needing the refuge of sleep and the safety of a duvet that still smelt of him. Three afternoons ago he'd lain there on clean sheets, his heart pounding as her legs entwined around his, binding him to her once more. Snatched seconds away from real life, staining her sheets with a passion he thought had died like a parched plant.

She'd watered him, bringing him back from the dead, a graveyard of stifled emotions, casting a spell around him. He'd never seen it before, the depth there was in her eyes, the fight that lived within her. She'd uncoiled beneath him, writhed and captured, taking him into a lair from which he never wanted to leave.

Across the pillow he smoothes her hair and still she sleeps. A clock ticks, beats, and it nears four am. He has two hours before he must return home, getting there to wake his son. Tiredness is of no issue; he is used to escaping the clutches of sleep, and time is too precious to spend unawake, unknowing.

Warm breath catches his skin as she exhales, her hand unconsciously reaching for him, rendering hid heart paralysed. He traces his fingers down the side of her face; feeing the silk of her neck and brushing the spot near her ear that makes her call his name for release. He hardens at the memory, memories, and his touch continues, walking the length of her collarbone, searching for the place where the bone has knitted roughly after a fracture. She was twenty-one and fell off a swing that she was riding too high. The story had made him smile, something he'd needed, and then he'd taken comfort from her body. His solace. His guilty pleasure. They could hang him for it.

He'd left as soon as could tonight, to see Jack as he slept, and to make his excuses to his ex-wife's - dead wife's - sister. Emily had said she was okay, that she didn't need a baby sitter, but her eyes had told him a different story. His fingers whisper between her breasts, his hands sliding underneath them, grazing their weight at the sides. He recalls the first time he saw her naked, on a case in Utah in a soulless room of an empty hotel, where temptation had held her arms right open and they had stepped into them. He had felt Emily's heart beat against his chest, felt the life inside of her spill into him as they had taken the night their prisoner.

He lies back down, his head near her shoulder and he inhales the scent of her perfume, now stale and dying. She'd answered the door in her night gown, knowing it was him and reprimanding him for not using his key. His lips had found hers as the clock had begun to tick, and then he'd kissed the bruises, making her cry with the tender pain he'd inflicted.

She was broken. He'd seen it, heard about it. Haley's death, his own close proximity to it, the women murdered in their homes – her ability to compartmentalise had been fractured. But they all had to find that place, that personal hell where flowers died before they bloomed, else they lost the fight. The humanity that reigned within them and stopped them from becoming the very thing they hunted. They had to feel, they had to hurt, otherwise they could never heal.

How close were they to the monsters they sought? Both of them had killed in recent weeks; a personal motivation behind both acts. Right or wrong, the act is now done, like many acts, and they have to move on and learn to breathe again. A clock ticks. She stirs, turns her head and looks at him. She doesn't speak. He cups the side of her face, a trace of moonlight touching her hair. Lighting her. Her breath warms his chest as she turns into him; her skin pressing against his and his hand goes to her back, pulling her closer.

They are lifelines, a beacon shining in that place where dark sky meets the ocean.

A clock ticks; the minutes falling away, eroded, and he feels her warm tears so his clasp grows tighter. He slips an arm underneath her body, needing her strength, needing her to have his. He mixes his fingers in her hair, needing her wrapped around him in every conceivable way.

Memories of the hours gone by flicker like a dying fire as he closes his eyes. But now she is safe and he has shown that she is safe. Returning the favour.

He does not stop the tears. The night will act as blotting paper for them, soaking up their sorrows, and the tear tracks will tomorrow be erased by the light. This is the pathway they have chosen, one drowning in the half-light and shadows of the souls they encounter, suffocating with the nightmares of the monsters they hunt and trap, and shrouded by the darkness that lies in each human. Including themselves.

She whispers his name. It is muffled and caught between their bodies and he moves onto his back, allowing her to lie on his chest, the sheets twisted around them. She only changes the sheets when she knows he will be around that day, needing to capture their smell within them. He wishes he could bring her back to his apartment again, like he had before Haley's death, but it is too soon, right now, but not forever.

She is sleeping again, more restfully this time. He hears her breaths become deeper as sleep consumes her and he revels in the fact that she is there and alive and his, as much as another person can be.

A clock ticks, and he relishes the feel of her against him; the weight of her legs as they cover his and the pressure of her breasts against his chest. He fights sleep, needing another few seconds, minutes, to photograph this moment in his mind.

A clock ticks, and her body shifts against his, its curves moulded against his edges. The moon will now be waning, handing the baton over to the sun. He lets his fingers ripple against her back, playing music against her skin, memorising every note that's written there.

A clock ticks. He pulls the sheets closer; the chill of the upcoming dawn surrounding them. He sees light, but the sun will remain hidden for another hour or more. She remains his temptation, his pleasure. His light.

After the darkness, there will always light.

A clock ticks.

* * *

_Slightly odd, probably, but do review anyway._

_Sarah x_


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